In startups it's really challenging to find the people that are truly exceptional at figured out mode versus the people that need structure and clarity. In particularly in sales like clear incentives and a clear plan one of the most interesting exercises I did really early at QIP was I went around and met with like a ton ofSales leaders or early sales folks at some of the SaaS companies such as Optimizely and Atlassian who don't even have salespeople. The first 10 often are closed by the CEO or someone like that, the next 40 are closed by someone that does not have Like the pedagreed sales background from Salesforce or X or Y or Z. When you're talking about
Our first episode is with Molly Graham, a seasoned exec and builder who particularly excels at helping startups to go not from 0 to 1, but from 1 to 2. We’ve interviewed her four times on First Round Review — which might be a record — because the advice she has to share and the experiences she can draw from are unbelievably helpful to founders and startup leaders. She helped build and scale Facebook, Quip, The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in their early days, and is now the COO of Lambda School.
While on The Review she’s shared advice on everything from managing your emotions and struggling with scaling, to codifying your culture and setting up your first comp system, today’s conversation is focused on a different topic — management.
This is a topic Molly has strong opinions on—she’s seen time and time again across her career how so many startup mistakes come down to general management issues. We cover everything from the traps that are easy to fall into, to why you should be spending more time with your highest—not your lowest—performers, to the managers she’s learned the most from, so there’s tons of insightful advice and practical tactics for both first-time managers and seasoned leaders alike.
You can read more about Molly’s approach to scaling startups on First Round Review. We particularly recommend following her advice to ‘give away your Legos’ https://firstround.com/review/give-away-your-legos-and-other-commandments-for-scaling-startups/
And here’s the article on compensation that Molly mentioned in the interview: https://firstround.com/review/A-Counterintuitive-System-for-Startup-Compensation/
You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @brettberson